Tag "education"

While visiting Where Rainbows Meet (WRM) in Vrygrond, the oldest township in Cape Town, I met with three inspirational young men who managed to overcome the odds thanks to positive intervention and hard work. Taytin, Sharif and Ashwin each have a unique story to tell, but their struggles are universal, especially for those growing up in townships. They share their experiences of how the organisation gave them hope for a brighter future.

This year, Where Rainbows Meet (WRM) celebrates their 10-year anniversary. The organisation has come a long way in the last decade, but their values and commitment have stayed constant and they have impacted the lives of over 10,000 community members in Vrygrond and its surrounding areas. Founder and director Mymoena Scholtz explains how back in 2008 the organisation started from nothing with nothing. Slowly, with the right team, she has built the training and development centre into what it is today.

Over two decades after South Africa’s first democratic election, the realities facing young people remain as troubling as ever due to issues such as crime, poverty, unequal educational opportunities, unemployment and drug abuse. While the country’s annual Youth Day on 16 June commemorates the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, the struggle for a better quality of life for the country’s youth continues – over 40 years later.

Have you ever been really hungry at school or work? If that’s a yes, then you know most people are not in the best of emotional states when they’re hungry. A hungry child at school is more likely to experience mood swings, aggression and poor academic performance than their adequately-nourished peers. Sadly, hunger is a daily reality for 23 million children in Africa alone.vThe UN Sustainable Development Goals consist of 17 goals to help promote prosperity for everyone around the globe while protecting the planet. Goal 2 is Zero Hunger, which seeks to ‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.’

The hardest part of travelling isn’t the plane ride 1,000 miles away by yourself, the foreign food, or the strange bed you sleep on. The hardest part of travelling is coming back home. It’s wonderful to explore the world, meet amazing new people, gain new experiences, and ultimately find yourself, but then reality hits when you return home. When you get back, it’s a high for about two weeks. Basically a celebrity, you are the revered person everyone wants to hang out with, and hear about your trip and your experiences, but what happens when you become just a regular person again?

In today’s world, getting a proper all-round education is more important than ever. Not only can educated people seize better opportunities for themselves, but they also enrich others with their successes and perspectives. Although almost every parent wants to see their child equipped for the future, often there are uncontrollable circumstances which prevent this from being the case. In Paternoster, a fishing village on the West coast, there is urgency for better education for the children to ensure they face a brighter future.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to volunteer at a crèche? And not just dedicating your time to the local crèche but rather caring for children in another country far from home? Cape Chameleon visited Butterfly Way Educare in Vrygrond, to find out how the staff and overseas volunteers spend their day with the children.

In South Africa, 600,000 children with disabilities are not in school, a figure that is detrimental to children, their families, and society as a whole. Since education is the key to opening many doors, the difficulties faced by disabled people are further compounded by their lack of schooling, making this statistic catastrophic.

There are eight of us in the car; myself, five Projects Abroad volunteers from the human rights office, our coordinator and our driver. As we drive through the gates of Bonnytoun we are met with high walls, barbed wire fences and uniformed officers, and I begin to feel slightly nervous at my decision to visit this boys’ juvenile detention centre.

Youth Day is a day where everyone takes a moment to celebrate the young people of South Africa as well as remember those who were lost in the country’s pursuit of freedom, specifically the Soweto Uprising of 1976. This year, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation hosted the Youth Health Festival (YHF) at the Artscape to help educate young men and women from Cape Town about sexual health and HIV/AIDS, a crisis that affects over 300,000 children in South Africa alone.